by Tee O'Fallon
“That’s better.” He eased his grip, but his tone was still laced with fury. “Because of what you did back there, I’m going to have a little fun before I kill you.” He grabbed her breast and squeezed.
No fucking way.
Cassie bucked off the ground and rammed her head squarely into Mosely’s forehead.
He yelped and released her hands.
The blow had Cassie seeing stars. The moment her vision cleared, she shoved at Mosely’s chest until he rolled off her. She scrambled away on her hands and knees. Rocks bit into her shins. Pine needles jabbed her palms.
A hand clamped around her ankle. “You need my permission to leave, bitch.”
Her legs were yanked out from under her, and she fell flat on her face and chest. Mosely dragged her backward over the uneven ground. Rocks rammed into her ribs. She flailed her arms, searching for a handhold.
He kept dragging her, laughing the whole time. “Now this is fun.”
The force of being dragged on her stomach rode her shirt up to her neck. Sharp pine needles and twigs scraped and bit into the tender flesh of her belly and breasts. She tried to kick free, but her legs were stretched tight.
“You’ll pay for what you’ve done.” He flipped her onto her back, then kneeled between her outstretched legs. She dug her heels and elbows into the ground and began backing away.
“Not so fast.” He grabbed her ankles and pulled until the insides of her thighs pressed against his knees. “Now you’re mine.” He slithered his hands up her stomach to her breasts.
Cassie yelled and tried to rise, but he planted his hand in the center of her chest and pushed her down.
He laughed. “Yeah, baby. Scream. It turns me on.”
Scream, hell. “No one lays hands on me without permission.”
She stretched her arms wide and with every remaining ounce of strength, pulled them together, boxing Mosely’s ears with such force he roared.
Cassie kicked both her feet into his groin. He fell onto his back, moaning, clutching the side of his head with one hand, his groin with the other.
Not seeing Mosely’s gun anywhere, she lunged for the only weapon available—a large rock. She raised it high over her head. Mosely reached behind his back. A shaft of sunlight filtering through the trees glinted off the gun in his hand.
Cassie smashed the rock down on his head with everything she had. He slumped to the ground. She raised the rock again, ready to pound it onto the bastard’s skull a second time. Only he was no longer moving.
There was blood everywhere. Mosely’s head, his face. Blood dripped from the rock in her hands onto her shirt.
“Cassie!”
She’d know that voice anywhere.
Mike.
People crashed through the trees, shouting. She let the bloody rock slip from her hands to the ground. The last thing she saw was Mike’s handsome, worried face as she collapsed into his arms.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Cassie slid behind the wheel of Dom’s black Crown Vic parked behind the Hopewell Springs Police Department. The interior of the car was hotter than the Nest’s kitchen, and the seat burned her butt straight through her gray dress slacks and white silk top. She turned the key, and the powerful V-8 engine rumbled to life. The police radio began squawking transmissions from every department within a hundred miles.
Even with the air conditioning cranked up, perspiration trickled down her forehead. As she dabbed it away, her fingers grazed the white bandage taped above her right eye. The marathon day of meetings and writing reports with Dom, Gray, and Mike was over, but the bump on her forehead from the car wreck throbbed with renewed vigor.
Strangely, Mike had been absent from the station for the last few hours, but Cassie appreciated the break. They’d both been swamped with red tape and professional obligations since Mosely attacked her yesterday. Oddly enough, Dom had been unexpectedly civil around Mike.
But for her, restricting all discussions with Mike to official business and knowing that after a few short days she would never see him again had frayed her every nerve. Not even Lt. Frye’s blustery, boisterous personality was enough to distract her from thinking about Mike.
Her boss had raced to Hopewell Springs last night to check on her. He’d spent half the day assisting Mike by fielding the frenzy of press inquiries. After word got out that U.S. senatorial candidate Joshua Mosely was the incognito owner of a white slavery, drug-dealing, go-go bar—and had put a contract hit on an undercover cop—both the NYPD’s and the Hopewell Springs Police Department’s phones had been ringing off the hook.
Cassie shifted the car into drive and headed the sedan toward home. She was beat beyond exhaustion and grateful to her partner and brother for finishing up the last meeting of the day without her. Odd how they’d seemed eager to get rid of her.
As she drove through town, a feeling of relief swept through her. The case was over. Mosely was physically and mentally incompetent to stand trial, thanks to the permanent brain damage inflicted by the rock she’d smashed into his head. The only place he’d be going anytime soon was to a psychiatric facility.
For the rest of his life Joshua Mosely would be under the control of strangers, something that would destroy him if he were capable of perceiving his situation. Fitting, in a sick sort of way, considering his life’s goal seemed to be to control everything and everyone around him. She wondered if the man had been a psycho from birth, or whether the events that shaped his life had turned him into the monster that he was. Either way, he was one monster who would never hurt anyone again.
The early evening rush hour, such as it was, bogged down Main Street at the town’s lone four-way intersection. She actually had to wait behind three other cars. In Hopewell Springs, that constituted a veritable traffic jam.
Cassie made a point of waving as she drove past two little girls skipping rope along the sidewalk. Just that morning she’d bought each of them big fat gift certificates for the Creamery, and with good reason. Those girls had been responsible for Mike, Dom, and Gray finding her. They’d told Mike she’d gotten into a green sedan with a mean-looking stranger. Mike then issued an A.P.B. for any and all green sedans, and soon after, he’d spotted the wrecked rental car on the side of the road. Dom later told her that Mike had driven the roads like a madman, searching for her.
Aside from falling into his arms in the middle of the woods, she and Mike hadn’t spent a single moment alone together, and he hadn’t seemed eager to rectify the situation.
Cassie sighed as she turned onto her street and waved to several neighbors. Things should have turned out differently. She’d hoped they would, but nothing had changed. She was in love with a man who couldn’t trust or forgive her.
It tore at her soul that Mike was willing to let the past destroy what they could have had, but in the end it didn’t matter. She loved him but could never stay in Hopewell Springs when that love wasn’t returned.
She pulled into her driveway and put the Crown Vic in park. After switching off the police radio she sat motionless. The only sound inside the vehicle came from the air conditioner on full blast. It was like a smack to the face. Her life was about to undergo a drastic change, and now that the moment had finally arrived she wasn’t sure she was prepared for it.
Yesterday, when she’d given notice to Lt. Frye, her boss had blown a gasket. The commissioner had promised her any assignment of her choosing, but she’d stood firm and handed in her papers. It was time to update her culinary résumé and figure out where she wanted to settle down.
Chuck was taking full charge of the Nest’s kitchen, and Rose had found a temporary prep chef until Leo recovered. She was still insisting Cassie would be her executive chef at the new restaurant when it opened eight months from now.
Not a chance. Her heart ached at the thought of being so near Mike when he might as well be a thousand miles away. She curled her fingers around the steering wheel and gazed out the windshield at the old colonial that had been her home for
the last month.
The kitchen walls still bore residual blood and cranial stains that couldn’t be washed off. Despite nearly having been murdered in her own kitchen, the darned house would always hold fond memories.
One more day or so to wrap things up here with the authorities, then she’d haul ass out of town and never look back.
Cassie shut off the engine and got out of the sedan, closing the door behind her. She inhaled the scent of roses and other summer flowers in full bloom. Maybe wherever she settled she could plant a garden bursting with lilacs and every kind of herb a chef could dream of.
Comforting barks came from behind the front door, and she smiled. When she’d brought Raven home this morning from the vet hospital, her K-9 was raring to go, licking her face until it was sticky with doggy saliva.
She took the stairs two at a time, eager to be welcomed by Raven’s smiling, furry face. No sooner did she push open the door, than Raven rose on her hind legs to cover Cassie’s face with another round of exuberant, slobbery kisses. She laughed and closed the door behind her, then buried her face in the dog’s sleek, soft fur. Fur that smelled vaguely of…lilacs?
Something strange tickled her face. “What the—?”
A sprig of lilac was tucked beneath Raven’s collar.
Raven sat, and Cassie plucked out the flower. “Where did you—?” She looked up to see lilacs everywhere. Literally.
Evening light filtered through the sheer living room curtains, illuminating lilacs on the floor, the hall table, perched on the coffee table and both end tables next to the sofa. Vases of lilacs covered every inch of horizontal space she could see. Even the floor and the first few steps leading upstairs were littered with baskets towering with fluffy bouquets.
Purple ones, pink ones, white ones, and the more unusual yellow lilacs were everywhere. Her house looked and smelled like a florist’s shop.
Raven took off down the hallway, her nails clicking on the wood floor as she bolted into the kitchen. Cassie walked in a daze to the hall table and looked for a card, but there was none. She trailed her fingers over the purple bouquet on the table and bent to inhale the scent unique to her favorite flower. A shadow fell across the table, and she automatically reached for her holster. This time, it was strapped to her hip.
A tall figure towered in the kitchen doorway.
Mike.
Their gazes met and held. His dark and stormy. She imagined hers was clouded by confusion. Despite her resolve to forget the only man she’d ever been in love with, her heart betrayed her by fluttering madly.
Mike looked gorgeous as ever in jeans and a navy blue polo shirt tucked into his pants. Raven pranced in circles around his long legs, licking his hand. For once, he ignored her. Raven whined, then stalked into the living room to settle on the floral rug in front of the fireplace.
“What are you doing here?” Cassie asked in a shaky voice, her lips trembling.
He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I came to apologize.”
She narrowed her eyes, the fight in her sparking to life. “You mean for being such a jerk?”
He breathed deeply, tightening the navy shirt over his broad chest. Cassie could see the bulge from a bandage that still covered his injury. “Yeah, that. I was an ass for running out on you the way I did. And for not listening to you.”
She shook her head in disbelief of everything that had transpired over the last week. “And you think you can show up here with flowers and make it all better?” So what if lilacs weren’t in season anymore and must have cost Mike hundreds of dollars.
“Not really.” He stared for a moment at his boots like a little boy being chastised. When he looked up, Cassie’s heart nearly melted at the worried look on his face. “But I thought they’d be a good ice breaker.”
“Ice breaker?” She clenched her hands to keep from grabbing a flower vase and hurling it at him. “You didn’t even give me a chance to explain. I never meant for you to find out about me that way. I know it was a shock, but you should have had more faith in me. In us.”
“I know, and that was wrong of me.” Mike’s dark brows furrowed. “I made a mistake, and I’m sorry.”
“Gray told me about the IA investigation six years ago.” Mike’s jaw tensed, but she didn’t back down. “Don’t be mad at him. He was only trying to help me see your side of things, why you hated me.”
Mike shook his head. “I never hated you.”
“And I never used you the way she did, but you didn’t want to hear it. You were too busy wallowing in the past to see there was someone right here who”—she swallowed hard, salvaging every ounce of her strength not to use the word love—“who cares about you.”
“I couldn’t have explained it better than you just did,” Mike said in a gentle tone.
Determined not to fall prey to the tugging at her heart, Cassie seized on something that bugged her. “How did you get in? I know I locked the door this morning when I left. And another thing, how did you get here? There’s no police car out front.”
“As far as how I got in…” Mike hitched his shoulder against the doorjamb, a sheepish grin on his lips. “…I have connections. And my truck’s parked around the corner.”
Connections, huh? When she’d turned at the last second before leaving the station, she’d caught Gray and Dom sharing a conspiratorial glance. Those two rats were undoubtedly Mike’s connections. Mike had apparently even won Dom’s forgiveness. A male conspiracy was definitely afoot. “You didn’t have to go to all this trouble to apologize. A simple note would have sufficed.” And saved her more heartache.
Mike shook his head. “Not personal enough.”
“Why does it have to be personal?” And why are you doing this? Don’t you know it’s killing me to see you again?
Her lips began to tremble, and she clamped her mouth shut, hoping he wouldn’t see how affected she was by his words, his nearness. Getting her heart stomped on was far too painful the first time around, and being taken on another roller-coaster ride was not on the agenda. Better to beat feet out of town while she still had her pride.
Mike looked around the room at the dozens and dozens of lilac bouquets. “Do you like them?”
She detected an uncharacteristic air of uncertainty in him, as if he truly didn’t know what her reaction would be to his mysterious appearance in her house, or the flowers. Heck, she didn’t know how to react. “Of course I like them, I—I love lilacs. But why are you really here?”
“Lilacs remind me of our first date. The night we cooked together at the Nest, I brought you lilacs.” He lowered his voice until it came out in a deep, sexy rumble. “It was the first time we made love.”
He took a step closer, but she held up her hand, and he froze in mid-stride. “Stop. Don’t do this.”
“Don’t do what?” Ignoring her request, he came closer until he was a scant two feet away.
The softly whirring air conditioner brought with it the spicy scent of Mike’s aftershave, a scent she would always remember. “You should go.”
“Can’t.” Another step and he was a mere foot away.
“Why not?” Cassie’s resolve tumbled downhill like a snowball gaining momentum. The closeness was too much as he towered over her so intimately.
He pulled his hands from his pockets and gently clasped her arms. “There are things we need to talk about.”
“There’s nothing we have to say to each other.” Warm tingles skittered across her skin. His nearness was overwhelming. “You said it yourself, it’s over between us. Thank you for the flowers.” She glanced behind her. “There’s the door. Please leave.”
Before I lose every stitch of pride I have left and beg you to stay.
“Told you. Can’t.” He pulled her closer until her breasts grazed his chest. “Not yet.” His breath was warm on her face. The overhead light flickered in his intense blue eyes. “I said I was sorry, but you haven’t told me you accept my apology.”
“Fine. Apology accepted.”
She curled her fingers over his thick forearms, intending to pull his hands away, but she might as well have tried prying loose a set of steel clamps.
Her thoughts vacillated like a fast-swinging pendulum. The smart thing would be to run somewhere far away where Mike could never hurt her again. The stupid thing would be to throw her arms around his neck and never let go. This conversation needed to end before she broke down in tears.
“Mike.” Her voice trembled. “Please go, I can’t do this.”
He kissed her, hard and gentle at the same time. His lips were warm, hungry, breaking through her last barrier. She clung to him, tasting him deeply until she couldn’t breathe.
When he pulled away, he tipped up her chin and pinned her with pained blue eyes. “It took a while for me to see what a sonofabitch I am. I was angry at something that happened a long time ago, and at someone who hasn’t been part of my life for over six years. You were right. The past is where I should have left it.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ears, his mouth tightening as he took in all the bruising on her jaw. When his finger grazed her cheek, her body betrayed her again by shivering from the delightful sensation. “I understand why you didn’t tell me who you were. It was a judgment call, and you did the best you could under tough circumstances. Remember, no Monday morning quarterbacking.”
“But—”
Mike shook his head, silencing her. In a gesture so sweet, he pressed her hand to his mouth, then held it over his heart. “I told you it was over between us. That was a lie. It will never be over between us. I’m miserable without you.”
Cassie’s breath caught in her throat. Her knees nearly buckled at the tenderness in his eyes.
“I had to get my head out of my ass,” Mike continued, “or risk losing the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“What are you saying?” Did this mean…?
“Dom told me you gave notice and that you were leaving town.” He tightened his arms around her, pulling her so close she had to crane her neck to see his face. “I’m saying I don’t want you to go.”
Cassie’s heart seemed to stop beating. Shallow breaths were all she could manage, short of not breathing at all.
